


I Saw Daddy Texting Santa Claus

by the_wordbutler



Series: Motion Practice [5]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Fluff, Legal Drama, M/M, baby motocross, motion practice universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers appreciates an American family Christmas.  He does not, however, appreciate the inherent design flaws of big-girl bicycles.  Really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Saw Daddy Texting Santa Claus

**Author's Note:**

> As is to be expected, this was beta-read by the lovely Jen.

“Okay,” Bucky says, setting down the wrench. Actually, not “setting.” No, setting implies that he put the thing down on the carpet gently. He more spikes it onto the floor like it’s personally offended him, and then, he throws up his hands. “This is _literally_ the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

The apartment’s small enough that his voice carries. Trust Steve, he’d know; he’s the one Bucky bellows at when he runs out of shampoo in the middle of his shower or can’t find his damn boxer shorts. “You’ll wake her up,” he hisses, and swipes his hand across his throat.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Are you kidding?” he demands, and there go the hands again. Steve tries to count down backwards from ten, because that is what surviving this experience requires. Counting backwards, slowly and calmly, while Bucky gesticulates like he’s been taking emphasis lessons from Tony Stark. “Dot could sleep through the apocalypse. Which, by the way, I think this is, ‘cause I’ve never met a bike this hard to put together.”

And Steve—

Steve has to admit that maybe, just _maybe_ , his husband has a point.

The living room is decked out for Christmas, predictably, complete with the tree, the lights, the garland, the window-clings, and every other potential decoration you might want when you’re the parent of a four-year-old who believes every holiday is the greatest holiday. There’s the paper advent chain hanging over the doorway to the hall, the over-stuffed stockings threatening to fall right off the mantelpiece, and the massive pile of presents—hand-delivered by “Santa,” of course—under the tree. The lights twinkle, the room smells like pine and the Christmas spice candle Bucky lit earlier, and really, it’s the very picture of an American family Christmas.

Except for the bike.

Or rather, the twisted, disorganized pieces of metal that one day will be a pink bicycle, complete with wheels (which are currently leaning against the side of the couch) and training wheels (which are currently—somewhere).

Steve drags a hand through his hair. It’s after midnight. There is absolutely no reason why anyone should be awake after midnight on Christmas Eve. “We can do this,” he says for what feels like the thousandth time.

He’s pretty sure Bucky’s sick of hearing that mantra, though, because he flops bodily onto the couch. “You said that when she went to bed.”

“I still mean it.”

“Steve.” And Steve knows that tone, because it’s the tone they both regularly use on their very stubborn daughter. “We’ve been working on this for two hours, and we’ve gotten nowhere. I’m pretty sure you need an engineering degree and a bionic limb to put it together.” He leans his head against the back of the couch. “Admit defeat.”

“The only thing she wanted from Santa was a big-girl bike.” Steve wants to be the voice of reason, he does, but Bucky’s rolling his eyes again. He comes over and drops onto the couch next to Bucky. Bucky slings an arm around his shoulders, an attempt to be either supportive or cajoling, but Steve just sighs. “We have to give her the big-girl bike.”

“We should’ve paid for a professional to put the big-girl bike together, first.”

“I thought we could do it.” He shakes his head. “It’s not like we had room to _keep_ it here, all put together and—”

“And like I said when we bought it,” Bucky interrupts, sounding very much like he’s winning the argument that they’re not having, “we could’ve left it with Tony.”

Steve lulls his head back against Bucky’s arm. It’s warm and familiar, a touch he craves after long days like today, and he leans into his grip. “He threatened to build a ‘baby motocross’ track in the garage, Bucky.”

“Okay, so, not Tony.” Bucky’s arm tugs him closer. “Phil?”

He shakes his head. “He and Clint are in—Kansas? Nebraska? Somewhere like that—for the holidays.”

“Natasha?”

Lucky for Bucky’s continued pain-free existence, the sharp look Steve levels at him makes him break into a grin. He laughs, a little nervously, and lifts his free hand. “Not Natasha,” he promises, and Steve’s soothed by the fingers tracing nonsense patterns along his upper arm. “I think we need more friends.”

Steve snorts a laugh. Bucky’s strong and warm, and he leans his head against his shoulder simply because he _can_. He’s frustrated and exhausted, ready to crawl into bed and forever forget the chunks of bicycle lying around his living room floor, and the heat radiating off Bucky does nothing to fix that. Christmas is their busiest time of the year, full of hidden presents and secret plans to surprise their daughter, but it’s also _their_ time of year. It’s the one day that’s belonged to nobody but them since Bucky’d returned from the Army, a day where they’d laid in bed and plotted out their lives while the snow fell outside.

He loves Bucky every day of the year, but more on _this_ day, the day where they can turn off the rest of the world and just be a family.

He’s about to say that, too, or something like it, when a tiny voice asks, “Daddy?”

Bucky jerks away from him like somebody’s jabbed him with a cattle prod but Steve’s the one off the couch in record time. He races around it, nearly sending one of the bike’s wheels spinning off into the kitchen, but with good reason. Because Dot’s standing in the doorway to the hall, her hair a mess of tangles and her candy-cane pajamas—a present from Uncle Tony, no surprise—twisted at odd angles. 

“What,” he asks once he’s in front of her, blocking her entrance to the living room with his body, “do you think you’re doing?”

Dot rubs her eyes with the back of a hand and then peers up at him. Bucky’s immediately at his side, hands on his hips and face _thoroughly_ unimpressed. There will come a day, Steve thinks, when their daughter is twelve and Bucky is the parent who can put his foot down. He secretly looks forward to it. “I heard a noise.”

“What kind of noise?” Bucky asks.

There’s an instant where Steve catches her calculating her next move, her face twisting as she discards possible answers in a search for the _right_ one. He raises an eyebrow at her, and a glimmer of hope touches her pillow-creased face. “Santa noises?” she guesses.

“And that’d be a ‘nope.’” Before Steve can even add his own reply to the mix, Bucky’s surging forward and sweeping Dot into his grip. She struggles for a half-second, suddenly hesitant, but Steve only needs a glance to see how tired she is. She proves it by flopping forward and pressing her face against Bucky’s neck. “Santa doesn’t come if you’re awake.”

“I heard a noise,” Dot maintains.

“Your dad and I were putting a couple things away before we went to wait for Santa,” Steve supplies. He steps forward and presses his hand against the small of Bucky’s back, then leans in and kisses Dot’s head. There’s no reason for the hand other than to stay _close_ to Bucky. The goodwill’ll wear off when they return to the stupid bike, he knows, but right now, the one place he most wants to be is the place where he can keep leeching touch. “But if you don’t go to sleep, he might skip the house.”

Dot shakes her head and peeks one eye out to look at Steve. “No, he won’t.”

“Let’s not take the chance.” Bucky rubs a hand along her back, but his eyes meet Steve’s, too. They stand that way for longer than either of them needs, just a second’s peace, before he rocks Dot in his grip. “C’mon, Dotosaurus.”

Steve stands in the doorway and watches the two of them disappear down the hallway, Dot already half-asleep on Bucky’s shoulder. When Bucky pauses, one foot in her bedroom, his smile’s small and sweet, the kind of smile Steve feels deep in his stomach.

There’s something to be said about a family Christmas.

But there’s also something to be said about unassembled big-girl bikes, which is why, once Bucky and Dot are safely tucked away in Dot’s bedroom, Steve returns to the living room and sets to work.

 

==

 

“ _Santa came_!”

Steve’s entire body _aches_ when Dot’s ear-splitting screech jolts him awake hours later, not from effort but from exhaustion. He’s stretched along the couch, his face pressed to Bucky’s chest and Bucky’s arms around his shoulders, and that’s desperately where he wants to stay. It’s warm, there’s a thick blanket covering both of them, and the familiar heat and scent of Bucky is just about the best thing to wake up to.

Dorothea, apparently, disagrees.

He cracks his eyes open in time to watch Dot skid to a stop in front of the tree and just _gape_ at it. The big-girl bike is hidden in the kitchen and sure to be discovered any minute now, but nothing compares to her first wide-eyed glance at her Christmas bounty. Steve elbows Bucky, who groans and presses his face into the back of the couch, but Steve can’t pull his eyes away from their little girl.

At least, not until she shouts, “Daddy! Daddy, Santa _came_!” Then, he flinches and hopes his ears aren’t bleeding.

The next minute and a half is filled with more pronouncements about Santa’s visit—yes, Dot, he filled the stockings; yes, Dot, he ate the shortbread cookies that just happen to be Bucky’s favorite; yes, Dot, he brought gifts for both your parents and, miraculously, Uncle Tony—but Steve can’t muster real _excitement_ quite yet. They’d stayed up until almost four a.m., first finishing the bike and then, ahem, celebrating the completion of the bike. And now, given that the sun’s not yet slipping through the windows and the coffee maker isn’t running, it’s maybe—if they’re lucky—five a.m. 

One hour of sleep, all because he loves his daughter and his husband’s low-riding pajama pants.

Steve’s still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when Dot freezes in the middle of the living room. She frowns, which makes Steve frown. “What’s wrong, honey?” he asks gently.

“Why are you and Daddy on the couch?”

And the problem, Steve thinks, with their daughter having Tony Stark for a godfather is that their daughter has begun to _think_ like Tony Stark. Steve yawns and forces himself to shift into a position that’s vaguely upright. “We fell asleep out here,” he offers.

Dot peers at him with a weird kind of four-year-old cynicism. “Why?”

“Because reasons,” Bucky grumbles, and pulls the fleece throw they’d been sharing up to his chin.

“I should’ve married a morning person,” Steve mutters, and Bucky retorts by maturely whipping the blanket out of Steve’s reach. It’s cold in the living room, and he shivers accordingly. Neither thing, however, affects Dot and her continued stare.

He rubs a hand over his face. God, he could go for some coffee right about now. “Santa wanted us to stay out here and make sure you didn’t get back up,” he replies. Beside him, Bucky rubs his face against the blanket. At least he’s starting to stir. “He really didn’t want to skip out on you when you’ve been such a good girl all year.”

Dot, Tony Stark or no, is still four years old. She accepts the information, blinks twice, and then _beams_ like someone’s just offered her the opportunity to meet every one of her favorite little ponies. “Really?” she asks, gaping.

“Really,” Steve confirms. 

He starts to hoist himself off the couch, too, because someone needs to manually start the coffee maker and Bucky’s still halfway to useless, when Dot asks, “How?”

Steve pauses, his hands on his knees. He knows his face is blank, maybe even confused, because Dot’s grin is slipping. “How—what?”

“How’d Santa tell you to stay here?” She shifts her weight from foot to foot, and Steve, not for the first time, wishes he’d asked someone else to be Dot’s godfather. Like a random stranger off the street, or that hobo he’s constantly charging and re-charging for urinating in public. 

He’s still struggling to formulate some kind of intelligent answer for her when Bucky says, “Text.”

And the proof that Dot is largely Steve’s daughter—both in appearance and personality—comes in the fact that she and Steve both turn to stare at Bucky. “What?” they ask, nearly at the same time.

Bucky, to his credit, is halfway propped-up now, creases from the couch cushions marring his face but otherwise (mostly) intact. He rubs a hand over the stubble Steve usually rubs his _cheek_ against and then, very slowly, smiles. “Santa texted us,” he explains, and Steve rolls his lips together to keep from smiling. “Let us know what he was up to.”

Steve’s certain Dot won’t fall for these kinds of lines in another year or two—she’s already tripping toward jaded, and she’s only four—but this morning, her eyes light up as bright as the Christmas tree. “Santa has a _cell phone_?” 

“Sure does, baby. C’mere, I’ll pull up his number and we can text him something while your dad starts the coffee.”

Dot nearly loses her pajama pants in her haste to climb onto the couch next to Bucky, and for a minute, Steve just _watches_ them. Bucky fishes his phone off the end table and makes a great show of scrolling through his text messages until he finds the exchange with “Santa.” Steve’s not sure what he’s going to pick—maybe a spam message about winning a hundred-dollar gift card, maybe the reminder from AT &T that their bill is due next week—but Dot leans against him with a smile that could jump-start the whole world turning, and suddenly, Bucky’s cover story doesn’t matter so much.

When Steve comes back into the living room ten minutes later, armed with two mugs of coffee and his camera, Bucky and Dot are still pressed together on the couch, and the cell phone is still between them. Except the phone’s abandoned on Bucky’s thigh and Dot’s pressed against his chest, the two of them halfway covered with the still-warm blanket and already dozing together. Steve’s not entirely sure how their elated little girl could drop off again that fast, or what happened to the Santa subterfuge, but he’s not really bothered by it. There’ll be plenty of time for presents, later, and stories about Santa. Hell, maybe next year, they can collude with Tony and text consistently with Santa for the couple weeks before Christmas.

No, what matters right now is that his husband and their daughter are asleep on the couch, cuddled together on Christmas morning, and that Steve can take ten seconds to snap a picture of it. Everything else—Santa, text messages, and bikes included—is just window dressing.


End file.
